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In June 2003, Professor Aaron Friedberg took a public service leave
from the University to serve in Vice President Dick Cheney's office as
a deputy national security adviser. Now he's back on campus, getting
ready to teach a course this fall on "National Security Policy."
"I came back to Princeton because I believe that universities have a
critical role to play in helping to address the challenges we face --
as centers of objective research, reasoned, civil debate and, above
all, training for future generations of leaders and citizens," said
Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs who joined
the faculty in 1987.
"Especially at a time when the stakes are high, the problems complex
and the 'right' answers far from obvious," he said, "it is important
that students be exposed to a wide range of views on the issues of the
Friedberg recently was interviewed by staff from the Woodrow Wilson
School's Office of External Affairs about his role in the vice
president's office, current challenges to American and global security,
and the focus of his research upon his return to the school.
What role did you play in the Office of the Vice President? Will you
be able to bring this experience into the curriculum and the courses
you'll be teaching this academic year?
At OVP my job title was deputy assistant to the vice president for
national security affairs and director of policy planning. Because I
didn't have a specific regional or functional portfolio I was able to
get involved in a wide range of issues, including proliferation, the
war on terrorism, policy toward Iran and North Korea, and relations
with Russia and China and with our major allies in Europe and Asia.
My responsibility as a policy planner was to try to take the long view
-- to think out a bit beyond the latest developments and pressing
crises that necessarily occupy so much of the government's collective
energy and attention. I learned a tremendous amount about specific
issues, the policy-making process and the importance (and limitations)
of intelligence. I also saw for myself just how hard it is to do
meaningful mid- to long-range strategic planning. I expect that I will
be mulling over my experiences for some time to come, and that they
will shape my future research and, perhaps even more, my teaching,
starting with "National Security Policy" this fall.
In general, I think we need to do more to prepare our students to think
strategically -- not only to analyze problems and identify desired
objectives, but to think through what is necessary to achieve them,
especially in situations where others may be pursuing very different
goals. During my time in Washington I kept thinking of [Prussian
military thinker Carl von] Clausewitz's remark that war is "a contest
of adversary wills." The same could be said of much of international
politics and, for that matter, of the domestic policy process.
One of your books focused on America's Cold War strategy. How has
America's grand strategy changed or evolved since the demise of the
Soviet Union, especially in the context of the rise of China, the U.S.
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the face of new threats like
global terror networks?
I found that there were a number of interesting parallels between the
period that I examined in my book on the Cold War and the problems that
we face today. In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States was confronted
by new, unfamiliar and terrifying threats. After having defeated one
set of enemies, the American people were plunged into a new era of
insecurity; instead of feeling safer after the second World War they
soon found themselves feeling even less safe. There were sharp,
sometimes bitter domestic debates over how best to deal with the new
threats -- it took some time for a rough consensus on national strategy
to emerge.
In a relatively short period, the executive branch of the U.S.
government was restructured and overhauled, with vast new agencies and
new powers -- that process, too, took 10 or 15 years to work itself
out. The early years of the Cold War were also a time when there
appeared to be a sharp tension between the requirements of security and
the necessity of preserving civil liberties and protecting individual
What's different today is that the most immediate threats are diffuse
and hard to assess. We know that we face the danger of terrorist
attack, including the possibility of attacks with weapons of mass
destruction. But it is very hard to judge how imminent that threat is
or how well we are doing in our efforts to minimize it.
It's also true that we don't have the luxury of focusing only on one
set of strategic challenges. In addition to terrorism, we have to worry
about the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by irresponsible
and aggressive states, and we also have to deal with profound,
long-term shifts in the global distribution of wealth and power -- the
rise of Asia and, in particular, of China.
Your research areas include East Asian security studies. What, in
your view, are the most serious security challenges facing the region,
and what are the most pressing U.S. policy challenges toward East Asia?
The most immediate dangers in Asia are the problems posed by North
Korea's relentless drive to acquire nuclear weapons, and the
ever-present possibility of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Either
one of those situations could blossom into a major crisis, and even a
shooting war, at any time. Over the next several decades the rise of
China will pose major strategic challenges. In the past it has often
proved very difficult to incorporate fast-growing powers peacefully
into an existing international system. The fact that China's economic
and military capabilities are expanding so rapidly, while its political
system remains repressive and authoritarian, is cause for concern.
What aspects of international security will you be researching upon returning to the Woodrow Wilson School?
Before I went into the government, I was working primarily on Asian
strategic issues and I plan to continue with that line of research.
I've also been doing some thinking and writing about the broader
problems of American strategy: How can we better integrate our efforts
to deal with the more immediate threats of terror and weapons of mass
destruction with our longer-term concerns? How long is the era of
American primacy likely to last, what could bring it to a close, and
what should we do with the enormous margin of advantage in material
power that we currently enjoy? What are the obstacles and difficulties
confronting a national strategy that aims to promote the spread of
democracy, in the Middle East and beyond, and how can these be overcome?
In what Woodrow Wilson School programs or initiatives will you be engaged this academic year?
I would like to see Princeton become even stronger and more active in
the field of strategic or security studies. Princeton has a long
tradition of scholarly excellence in this field extending back to
before the U.S. entry into the second World War. In many ways the
problems we face today are as urgent and complicated as they were then,
or at the start of the Cold War.
In the two years that I've been gone we've added a number of
outstanding new faculty with interests in this area and I know that
Dean [Anne-Marie] Slaughter is deeply committed to building on what has
already been accomplished. Princeton has many students and alumni who
are deeply concerned with the problems of national and international
security. We have a lot with which to work.


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Jacksonville, FL – The Jacksonville Jaguars released safety Dawan Landry and cornerback Aaron Ross on Friday.
Landry, 30, started all 32 games in his two seasons with the Jaguars after signing an a free agent in 2011. He had 100 tackles and one interception last year.
The 30-year-old Ross recorded 46 tackles in 14 games (nine starts) for the Jaguars in 2012, his lone season with the club.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Education and training National and state education and training summary tables Data sources and definitions Young people at risk in the transition from education to work Many young people are fully engaged in either education or employment, or a combination of both. Some of those who are not fully engaged in these activities may be at risk of becoming long term unemployed, underemployed, or marginally attached to the labour force; or may lack skill formation that can assist them over the long-term in the labour market. In 2004, 31% of recent school leavers aged 15-19 years were in this situation, as were 23% of young adults aged 20-24 years. Multiple qualification holders Qualifications can provide a pathway to career progression, or a change in work or can update skills required in an increasingly technological workforce. In 2001 just over half of 15-64 year olds held non-school qualifications and almost a third of those with qualifications held more than one non-school qualification. This article examines the characteristics of these 2.3 million multiple qualification holders. School students' mathematics and science literacy Literacy in areas such as science and information technology, as well as mathematics, is becoming more important for functioning in our technical world. The recent results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment show that Australian students performed well in comparison with students from 41 OECD and other countries. This article explores the mathematics and science literacy of Australian students, examining results by gender, states and territories, and for Indigenous students.


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Rasheed Sulaimon Crescendos While Quinn Cook Spirals
Posted by Chris Kehoe on February 7th, 2014Rasheed Sulaimon came into this season with high expectations for himself, as did most all of college basketball and Duke fans. Sulaimon had averaged 11.6 PPG in 29 minutes per game as a freshman and was coming back better than before, surrounded by even more talent. The shooting guard position seemed to be Sulaimon's to lose as well, with freshman and fellow Texas native Matt Jones the only other true shooting guard on the roster. Sulaimon was riding an extreme high after his very successful freshman campaign and his gold medal winning summer on the U-19 USA Team, making him a back-to-back gold medal winner. There were even whispers of the 6'4" Texan making the leap to the NBA, but his draft stock never firmly solidified itself in the first round.
Unfortunately for Sulaimon, this type of performance didn't materialize and surrounded by talented offensive threats like Rodney Hood and Jabari Parker, he wasn't having the ball in his hands as much as he would've preferred. Sulaimon made his living as a slasher his freshman year, darting into the lane and creating his own shots. With shooters and primary offensive options like Seth Curry and Ryan Kelly spotting up, this worked well for last year's Duke team. But with Parker doing exactly that at a much higher clip, those lanes were shut down and a lot of touches for Sulaimon were disappearing. Instead of adapting to a new style of play and efficiently playing alongside Hood and Parker, Sulaimon resisted and was thrown into Coach K's doghouse where he stayed up until recently, even chalking up a dreaded DNP-CD in December against Michigan. Sulaimon didn't exactly "break out" immediately after that game versus Michigan, playing only 5 minutes versus Gardner Webb. But since the December 19 game versus UCLA, Sulaimon has been improving and playing with a newfound sense of confidence, outside of two outliers at Clemson and Pittsburgh. Read the rest of this entry »


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In the first two months of 2019, UIA carried more than one million passengers and increased traffic by 9% over the corresponding period of 2018.
Within the reported timeframe, UIA operated 8 930 flights, which corresponds to the figures of 2018.
At the same time, the load factor has also increased by 1% up to 74%.
The punctuality rate of UIA flights in February of this year has reached 85% compared to 77% in February of 2018.
UIA mail and cargo traffic reached 2,800 tons and increased by 2% compared to the same period of the last year.
Ukraine International Airlines Press Service
Tel/fax: (044) 238 26 97,
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
The Official eBay Bible, Third Edition: The Newly Revised and Updated Version of the Most Comprehensive eBay How-To Manu al for Everyone from First-Time Users to eBay Experts (Paperback)
Uncle Griff, Dean of eBay Education, brings us the latest on all things eBay with the only officially endorsed and authorized guide to this phenomenal auction site. The Official eBay Bible has sold more than 150,000 copies in previous editions and eBay today is bigger than ever, with 203 million registered users and 541,000 official eBay stores nationwide. The Official eBay Bible, Third Edition is fully revised and totally updated with all of the latest changes to the site, making all previous books on eBay obsolete.
Much more than a user's guide, The Official eBay Bible, Third Edition includes the inspiring stories of real-life buyers and sellers, as well as tips and tricks on some of the powerful, but little-known aspects ofusing the site. This definitive sourcebook includes instructional plans for users of all levels, whether they're running a small business through the site or simply enjoying it as a hobby. New features in the thirdedition include: a new streamlined organization, images of all the latest features and screens, and even more information for small-business owners. Packed with over seven hundred illustrations, The Official eBay Bible, Third Edition delivers the ultimate word on eBay, from an insider who has been there from the beginning.
The most comprehensive and most current guide available. (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
Clear, simple, and well organized. . . . The depth of GriffithÆs commonsense knowledge and the clarity of his writing will be worthwhile to anyone with a personal interest in eBay. (Publishers Weekly)


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By Stephanie Kelton (h/t Matthew Berg)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave his fourth lecture at George Washington University yesterday. Buried in the lecture, beginning at about 19:18 in the video, Bernanke explained where the Fed got the money to "pay for" the assets it purchased as part of its Quantitative Easing (QE) policies.
I remember when the Fed announced the first round of QE. Those who don't understand Fed operations – think most mainstream economists – went nuts. Many worried that the Fed would be unable to "unwind" its positions (i.e. divest itself of the assets – MBS, Treasuries, etc. – it had purchased) because banks would refuse to swap their nice safe cash for riskier instruments when the economy recovered. Others insisted that QE was "stuffing the market full" of too many dollars and that this, inevitably, would result in hyperinflation.
John Carney just wrote a very nice piece, showing that not only was the Fed able to find buyers for its assets but that markets actually bought them back at a premium. Bernanke addresses the second objection in his remarks below – idle balances don't chase any goods – but it's the financing of the asset purchases that I want readers to understand, because this is fundamental to understanding Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
The Federal Reserve, like any bank, can acquire an asset simply by crediting a bank account. In other words, the bank pays by creating money. As Alan Greenspan explained, the Fed has an unlimited capacity to spend in US dollars. It can pay trillions of dollars with a single keystroke. Here is Chairman Bernanke (Readers can follow is presentation beginning on page 17):
"Now, you might ask the question, well, the Fed is going out and buying 2 trillion dollars of securities – how did we pay for that? And the answer is that we paid for those securities by crediting the bank accounts of the people who sold them to us, and those accounts, at the banks, showed up as reserves that the banks would hold with the Fed. So the Fed is a bank for the banks. Banks can hold deposit accounts with the Fed, essentially, and those are called reserve accounts. And so as the purchases of securities occurred, the way we paid for them was basically by increasing the amount of reserves that banks had in their accounts with the Fed.
So you can see this, here, this is the liabilities side of the Fed's balance sheet. Of course, assets and liabilities (including capital) have to be equal. So the liabilities side had also to rise near 3 trillion dollars, as you can see.
Now, take a look first, as you look at this, take a look first at the light blue line at the bottom. The light blue line at the bottom is currency – Federal Reserve notes in circulation. Sometimes you hear that the Fed is printing money in order to pay for the securities we acquire. And I've talked about that in some, you know, in giving some conceptual examples. But as a literal fact, the Fed is not printing money to acquire these securities, and you can see it from the balance sheet here, the light blue line is basically flat. The amount of currency in circulation has not been affected by these activities.
What has been affected is the purple area. Those are reserve balances. Those are that accounts that banks, commercial banks, hold with the Fed, and they are assets of the banking system and they are liabilities of the Fed, and that's basically how we paid for those securities. And so, the banking system has a large quantity of these reserves, but they are electronic entries at the Fed. They basically just sit there. They're not in circulation. They're not part of any broad measure of the money supply. They're part of what's called the monetary base, but again, they're not, they certainly aren't cash.
Then there are other liabilities including Treasury accounts and a variety of other things that the Fed does – we act as the fiscal agent of the Treasury. But the two main items, you can see, are the notes in circulation and the reserves held by the banks."
So ask yourself this question: If the Federal Reserve can create trillions of dollars with a single keystroke, and the Fed is the government's bank, then why does President Obama claim we've "run out" of money? Why have Democrats and so-called progressives supported job-killing budget cuts in the name of "shared sacrifice"? Why are we throwing away the equivalent of $9.8 billion in lost output every single day? Why don't we do something about our $2.2 trillion infrastructure deficit, 25 million underemployed and unemployed Americans, 100 million Americans in or very near poverty, and so on?
The answer is simple. Most of us don't understand the monetary system. Instead of deciding how the government should wield its power over the dollar, we live in fear of the ratings agencies, the Chinese, the bond market vigilantes and other imaginary evils. And this holds all of us back. Unused resources abound, human needs go unmet, and the vast majority of Americans believe that 'There Is No Alternative' (TINA). Or, as Warren Mosler says, "Because we fear becoming the next Greece, we're turning ourselves into the next Japan."
There is an alternative. And it begins with an understanding of the monetary system. The cat is already out of the bag. Chairman Bernanke confirms it. Money is no object.
Follow us on Twitter @stephaniekelton
Proof platinum coin. http://my.firedoglake.com/wigwam/2011/08/09/greenspan-the-united-states-can-pay-any-debt-it-has-because-we-can-always-print-money-to-do-that/


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(BPT) – When the high school class of 2014 graduates from college in five years, more than 8 million jobs will be available in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). For students today, STEM is their future.
Innovations driven by STEM are shaping today's economy. Though STEM accounts for a majority of job growth in the U.S., the number of students enrolling in relevant degree programs in college to fill these positions continues to decline, leaving a gap of skilled professionals. Women, in particular, are underrepresented in STEM. While women account for nearly half of all filled jobs nationwide, only a quarter of STEM-related positions are held by women.
Even with the known gap, many women are pioneering the industry, showing young girls they too can be successful in STEM. They are leading the charge in bettering the world by developing innovations and technologies such as global, online crowd-sourcing platforms that allow supporters to give funds from mobile devices. Others are advancing alternative energy products that deliver electricity, water and other basic resources in developing countries.
To help bridge the gap and ready the next generation of women innovators, many organizations support initiatives to introduce students, specifically young girls, to the importance of STEM. DeVry University, for instance, has its annual HerWorld program.
"HerWorld was created 16 years ago to educate high school girls about STEM and careers in STEM," says Donna Loraine, provost/vice president of Academic Affairs at DeVry University. "Our goal is to show girls how they can make a difference in the world through these fields."
A recent study by the Girl Scout Research Institute found that more than 80 percent of high school girls surveyed expressed interest in considering a career in a STEM field, including engineering, information technology and software development. This is a positive outlook, as positions in STEM are becoming available more rapidly than opportunities in any other field.
HerWorld empowers young women to succeed alongside their male counterparts by participating in confidence-building activities and hands-on workshops. They also hear inspirational stories from real, female role models working in STEM fields.
This year, nearly 7,000 girls from high schools across the country will attend local events during National HerWorld Month in March. Emmy-Award nominated actress Mayim Bialik, renowned for her roles on television series Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, is partnering with DeVry University to further the mission of HerWorld and inspire these girls by sharing her personal STEM journey – balancing her acting career while earning her Doctorate of Philosophy degree in neuroscience from UCLA.
"When I was a teenager, my biology tutor on the set of Blossom inspired me to think about science in a way that showed me that science was made for girls, too," says Bialik. "It gave me the confidence to pursue a degree in the sciences. I want to motivate and encourage girls to work hard to improve their math and science skills and their perceptions about those fields, regardless of their career goals."


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Moulshri Kanodia
According to the "OECD Health Statistics 2014: How Does India Compare" report, the overall health spending accounted for only four per cent of the GDP in India in 2012, out of which only 33 per cent of health spending was funded by public sources. Further, health accounted for only 4.8 per cent of total government spending in 2012. India ranks extremely high even among other developing countries in out-of-pocket costs on healthcare.
The "Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2016-17" says that tobacco smoking is a major preventable risk factor for a number of causes of death. In India, 10.7 per cent adults smoked daily in 2010 and it remains so even in 2016. When measuring the exposure of second-hand smoke in households, women are at a higher risk (39.3 per cent) in comparison to men (38.1 per cent) but unfortunately our policies remain passive on this issue.
With the dismal condition of healthcare in India, the provisions for healthcare are even worse when it comes to women-specific diseases. Generally, women's health receives attention only during pregnancy; this comes from our patriarchal understanding of women's role in society.
Cardiovascular disease, stroke, kidney disease, respiratory diseases and trauma are major causes of death for women worldwide. The health profile of India by WHO reveals that women have a higher life expectancy in comparison to men, but this is marred by disorders like musculoskeletal diseases, depression, etc. Social structures and prejudices also create an environment in which women's health and well-being are further compromised.
Due to a lack of disease-specific data on gender differences, there is a complete absence of evidence about preventive care for women, along with issues like increased consumption of tobacco, alcohol and drugs. Gender disparities have also crept into healthcare delivery and women's access to treatment.
Traditionally, much of the work done by women is performed within the context of the family. As women move beyond their traditional occupations in today's era, they meet new health hazards which add to the existing occupational hazards.
Globally, psychological violence at work, especially bullying, violence, mobbing and harassment (including sexual harassment) are reported to be major concerns for women. Many studies show that women are at particular risk of physical and psychological violence both in and outside the workplace. But this is rarely considered under the banner of occupational safety and health. Appropriate indicators must be established when examining compensation for work accidents and injuries in such cases.
As a result of the neglect of women's occupational injuries, women are reported to be at much lower risk of occupational injuries and accidents. For instance, till recently, deteriorating respiratory health due to pollution from household cooking was not considered an occupational health issue. Whatever little data is available on women's occupational health and safety issues is mostly aggregated and this ignores many important aspects of women's health profiles.
A UN study of 31 countries shows women are working 10 to 30 per cent more hours than men and that two-thirds of women's work is unpaid, unvalued and invisible. Yet our national health programmes fail to address health issues pertinent to women.
Low participation rate of women in the labour market is also attributed to uncertain occupational health and safety. Thus, there is a high urgency for a comprehensive plan for women's health whether in the workplace, household, or other spheres.
(Moulshri Kanodia, German Chancellor Fellow at Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Foundation), & Researcher at Harriet Taylor Mill Institute, Berlin School of Economics and Law. The views expressed are personal)


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First Principles
CPF Declaration of First Principles |
1. Fatherlessness is the number one social crisis facing our nation. It is incumbent on all concerned citizens to question all policies and laws to determine if, and/or how they promote fatherlessness, and then work to reverse them. It should be officially recognized that because of the social upheaval of the last few decades, the institution of fatherhood now requires special protections.
Divorce and Child Custody
2. The law must mandate equal shared legal and physical custody. Adults who bring life into the world by an act of consensual sex cannot have their parental rights curtailed simply because the other parent wills it. Parental rights of unwed parents must only be restricted in the same circumstances where it is done with intact families: when there exists legitimate concerns for the welfare of the children.
As long as there are incentives to eliminate one parent from the lives of his/her children, there will be destructive custody battles. The incentives must be removed. Once they are, families will be strengthened on both sides of the equation, since more parents will choose to work through the difficulties in the relationship when they know that they do not have the power to eliminate the other parent from the post-marriage family.
3. The law must mandate that in a family breakup, actions by one parent to eliminate the other parent, be they allegations of abuse, moving a great distance away from the family residence, etc., will be considered not in the best interest of the child[ren], and will be considered compelling cause to limit the custodial rights of that parent in favor of the cooperative parent.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence has become a hopelessly politicized issue. Estimates of the number of women battered in their homes each year range from 188,000* to 6,000,000**; and even higher numbers have been claimed***. Also, it has become impossible to address this issue in an intelligent fashion when definitions of violent and abusive behavior have been broadened to include such things as "logic, claiming the truth, not responding to others' needs, and emotional withholding****."
Furthermore, domestic violence studies, policies and programs that recognize abuse in all combinations of relationships yet dismiss female-on-male abuse/violence as being statistically insignificant, are clearly agenda-driven and have little credibility. Unbiased research shows that female-on-male violence not only accounts for a sizable part of all domestic violence, but is also an important factor contributing to serious male-on-female domestic violence. For the latter reason alone it can't be ignored.
4. All efforts to address domestic violence that ignore female aggression must be challenged whenever possible. Any and all laws that are written to protect one class of adults at the expense of the civil rights of another class are reprehensible in nature and antithetical to the principles of liberty and equal protection on which our nation was founded. Whether they are explicitly targeted, such as the federal Violence Against Women Act, or implicitly targeted as with M.G.L. 209A: Zero tolerance for any laws that abridge the constitutional rights of one specific class of people for the sake of a politically correct goal that suits an ephemeral political trend.
Child Support
In its present form, child support is a misnomer. There is no real "child support." The present system takes money from non-custodial parents, overwhelmingly men, and gives it to custodial parents, overwhelmingly women, to spend however they see fit. It is an intolerable condition that a father must be forced to subsidize a family that has been forcibly taken away from him.
5. Following a family breakup, assuming both parents wish to stay involved with their children, no money should be forcibly transferred from one household to another, except in exceptional circumstances, and then only to insure that the children's needs are taken care of. If one parent chooses to be an absent parent, he/she should provide financial support for the children that they brought into the world. Zero tolerance for intentional abandonment and parental irresponsibility.
Sexual Abuse of Children
6. Sexual abuse of children is deviant and pathological behavior, and society must protect children from such sexual predators. Intentionally making false allegations of sexual abuse is itself a form of sexual abuse, and this behavior must be criminalized. The children that are affected must be protected from the perpetrators, be they a vindictive parent, child abuse medical "expert," zealous social worker or attorney, or a witchhunt-driven, child-related institution.
* Murray Straus, Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire.
** Time magazine, September 5, 1983.
*** Press conference by President Clinton announcing national 800 domestic violence hotline number, a questioner commented on the "billions" of battered women. February 1996.
**** Battered Women's Resources, Inc.


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By the time she was 24, Karen Carpenter was already famous, having released more than a dozen hit records with her brother, Richard, including "Close to You," "We've Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Superstar" and "Top of the World." Less than 10 years later, she'd be gone, the victim of heart failure brought on by anorexia nervosa. Karen Carpenter died 30 years ago Monday at age 32, and her legacy as one-half of the singing duo The Carpenters is a source of some disagreement.
Today, there are more than a half-dozen websites devoted to her life and career, while several Carpenters tribute bands tour in both America and the U.K. Rolling Stone rated her velvety contralto voice at No. 94 on its list of the Top 100 greatest singers of all time. Yet every person who enjoys The Carpenters as much as I do knows several others who don't. In fact, my entire household is divided on the issue. Not evenly divided, mind you: I love their music; no one else in my family can stand it.
It reminds me a little of my junior high school days, when The Carpenters were riding high on the charts and two die-hard, acid rock-loving bullies taunted me to name my favorite group. I told them. They laughed and slammed me against a locker.
But the fact remains that I'm not alone in my musical estimation of Karen Carpenter's gift — a number of music-industry luminaries have extolled the virtues of her vocals. Paul McCartney, for one, said that she has "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive."
If you listened only to the radio in the 1970s and didn't buy the albums, you might not know just how far beyond the hits The Carpenters' catalog really travels. There are Great American Songbook classics, golden oldies, torch songs, and even a novelty or two, like "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft." All those multitracked harmonies in the background of many of their hits, all those oboes and French horns and harps — that's not the entire musical story for The Carpenters, and that's a bit surprising to many people. But even then, it isn't always easy to get those people onboard.
Karen Carpenter was born in 1950, 3 1/2 years after Richard, in New Haven, Conn. Richard was a musical prodigy from the start, and would stay inside listening to records and practicing as a boy. Karen much preferred to be outside playing softball. Their parents, Agnes and Harold, moved the family to Downey, Calif., in 1963, with the idea that the recording scene there would provide good opportunities for Richard.
By then, Karen had developed her own love of music, taken up the drums and began singing. Richard formed several combos and always took his sister along for the ride. However, it was actually Karen — not Richard — who got a recording contract first, at 16. Unfortunately, the deal was short-lived because the small record label had little money for promotion.
By 1970, Karen and Richard had broken through. Having signed with A&M Records, their singles were dominating the charts, and they would go on to win Grammy Awards the following March for best new artist and best contemporary performance by a duo.
Most of Karen's friends say that she was a goofy, fun-loving and caring friend — someone who craved stuffed animals and adored children. But she also had serious personal issues. She struggled to feel loved and accepted by her mother, who, by many accounts, was a stern and difficult woman. She also sought a sense of independence, and maybe even a reprieve, from her workaholic brother, who called all the shots and insisted on a grueling recording and touring schedule.
In 1979, Karen recorded a solo album with legendary producer Phil Ramone, but Richard and the executives at A&M didn't like the results and shelved it. Not long afterward, she met and married a real estate developer who, it turned out, was mostly interested in her money. What's more, he hadn't told Karen, who wanted to have children more than anything, that he had had a vasectomy.
The one thing Karen Carpenter knew she could control was her weight. Never a skinny child or young adult, she was conscious of the way she looked and was dieting obsessively by the mid-1970s. She sought help for anorexia, but apparently never devoted herself fully to a cure. Her mother found her dead on the morning of Feb. 4, 1983, on the floor of a walk-in closet at home. Karen had been taking massive amounts of ipecac syrup, which induces vomiting.
Karen's own all-time favorite Carpenters song was 1976's "I Need to Be in Love," which can be thought of as the theme of her life. One of the lines goes, "So here I am with pockets full of good intentions / but none of them will comfort me tonight." If nothing else, on the 30th anniversary of her death, those of us who got slammed against a locker simply for liking The Carpenters still have her music — her voice — for some comfort.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Looking for logic in North Korea's threats
SEOUL, South Korea: To the outside world, the talk often appears to border on the lunatic, with the poor, hungry and electricity-starved nation threatening to lay waste to America's cities in an atomic firestorm, or to overrun South Korea in a lightning attack.
Enemy capitals, North Korea said, will be turned "into a sea of fire." North Korea's first strikes will be "a signal flare marking the start of a holy war." Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal is "mounted on launch pads, aimed at the windpipe of our enemies."
And it's not all talk. The profoundly isolated, totalitarian nation has launched two rockets over the past year. A February nuclear test resulted in still more U.N. sanctions. Another missile test may be in the planning stages.
But there is also a logic behind North Korea's behavior, a logic steeped in internal politics, one family's fear of losing control and the ways that a weak, poverty-wracked nation can extract concessions from some of the world's most fearsome military powers.
It's also steeped in another important fact: It works.
At various points over the past two decades, North Korea's cycles of threats and belligerence have pressured the international community into providing billions of dollars in aid and, for a time, helped push South Korea's government into improving ties.
Most importantly to Pyongyang, it has helped the Kim family remain in power decades after the fall of its patron, the Soviet Union, and long after North Korea had become an international pariah. Now the third generation of Kims, the baby-faced Kim Jong Un, is warning the world that it may soon face the wrath of Pyongyang. If the virulence of Kim Jong Un's threats have come as a surprise, he appears largely to be following in his father's diplomatic footsteps.
"You keep playing the game as long as it works," said Christopher Voss, a longtime FBI hostage negotiator and now the CEO of the Black Swan Group, a strategic advisory firm focusing on negotiation. "From their perspective, why should they evolve out of this? If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Like hostage-takers, the North Koreans find themselves backed into a corner of their own creation, surrounded by heavily armed foes and driven by beliefs that seem completely illogical to everyone else. "From the outside, it makes no sense," said Voss. "From the inside it makes all the sense in the world."
But the North Koreans also have repeatedly and purposefully backed themselves into those corners, terrifying the world with missile launches and nuclear tests that often end with North Korea getting more international assistance.
Take the early 1990s, when Pyongyang backed away from a nuclear weapons program in exchange for promises of $5 billion in fuel and two nuclear reactors. Or the late 1990s, when North Korea launched a suspected missile over Japan and dispatched a submarine into South Korean waters. But by 2000 the leaders of both Koreas were sitting down for a historic summit in Pyongyang. Then, in 2006, North Korea terrified the world with a nuclear weapons test, but a year later ratcheted back its nuclear program in exchange for aid and political concessions.
The predictability of the pattern is an important sign to scholars that at least part of what is going on has been carefully considered, and that Pyongyang has clear goals in mind.
In other words: No matter how irrational the situation looks, North Korea's leadership is not crazy.
Instead, many observers believe, North Korea simply wants the world to believe it is crazy, leveraging the international community's fear of unpredictability to magnify its power.
The result is obvious.
"How many countries have been overrun since the end of the Cold War? How many dictators have been deposed?" asked Rodger Baker, an analyst for Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm. "And where is North Korea? It's still there."
The North Korean leadership also retains, as far as is known, the support of its people. Their lives are often miserable, hunger is widespread and indoor toilets are a luxury to many. But other than a few whispered rumors of minor military rebellions, there has been no sign of revolt.


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The Mars Pathfinder Landing Site
Mars Pathfinder landed in a valley of Mars called Ares Vallis, shown in this picture. Ares Vallis is near Xanthe Terra, which can be seen on the large map of Mars. The picture to the left is low-resolution and turned sideways. You have to click on the image to see everything.
This spot was chosen for the landing site because scientists thought that like Earth, Mars had "flood plains", that is fields created by rivers. On a floodplain, water carries different kinds of rocks from higher up to lower places and leaves them there. Ares Vallis is just such a plain. Thus scientists expected to find many different sorts of rocks to experiment with. Rocks may have come from mountains around the landing site, some of which are 30 kilometers away, to the south, as viewed in the big image. These outcroppings may be composed of andesite or basalt, both of which are igneous rock.
Following the Rover experiments however, the origin of the rocks of the plain became less clear. Reasons why the landing site may be different than expected include:
- the nature of the flood plain, which the Rover observed up close
- the presence of nearby impact craters, particularly one called "Big Crater", better seen in the big image.


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When does new news become old news?I am in the latter group. I think it is surprising that more than half of the time an article is read, it is being read more than 36 hours after it was published. It seems that old news is news after all.
In the case of a news article on the Internet, the answer is surprisingly long: 36 hours on average .... More precisely, 36 hours is the amount of time it takes for half of the total readership of an article to have read it.
Traditional ideas about the way people use the Internet would have led researchers to expect a much shorter half-life, more like two to four hours.
"You can spin it two ways," said Dr. Barabasi, a specialist on complex networks. "Gee, only 36 hours is the typical half-life of an article. Or gee, I would have expected it to be shorter."
If old news is news, there is a question of how you help people find the good stuff. How can we surface interesting, older articles on each reader's front page?
Looking at that, Neil Budde has an interesting quote in the article about personalized news:
Neil F. Budde, general manager of Yahoo News, said his site must balance a variety of competing interests: frequent visitors who get bored by even slightly stale news, less frequent visitors who won't know what has happened in the last few hours or even days, and the editors' own news judgment.It is not clear, Neil may only be talking about personalization based on your last visit, offering some older articles if you have not visited in a while. Or, perhaps Neil is going a step further and suggesting that Yahoo News should penalize articles you have seen before and recommend new articles based on what you have read.
"What would be ideal would be to keep track of when you were last on our site and present a package of news that would be different than what others see."
Either way, it is interesting to see that Yahoo News wants to show different people different news stories based on their behavior.


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Story highlights
Richard White, 49, of San Diego, California, was hiking alone when the bear killed him
Photos taken by the backpacker just before the attack show "nothing graphic," a park spokeswoman says
"We're not sure what happened after the camera was put down," she says
State troopers and rangers killed the bear Saturday
A southern California man killed by a grizzly bear in Alaska's backcountry was shooting photos of the animal that killed him just moments before the attack, a National Park Service official said Sunday.
The bear that killed Richard White, 49, was still with his body when rangers found him in Denali National Park on Saturday, the official said.
The San Diego resident had been backpacking alone for three nights when he was mauled to death by the bear, according to a park service statement.
Grizzly bear kills backpacker in Alaska's Denali National Park
Photographs found in his camera revealed that White was watching the bear for at least eight minutes near a river before the attack.
"The bear was generally unaware that he was there until the last couple of shots, then his attention turned," park spokeswoman Maureen McLaughlin said.
The photographs "are not that demonstrative" and show "nothing graphic, or any showing major signs of aggression," McLaughlin said. "We're not sure what happened after the camera was put down."
State troopers, park rangers and wildlife biologists, using the photos to identify the "large male bear," shot and killed the animal as it was still "defending the kill site along the Toklat River as the recovery team attempted to reach White's remains," the park service said.
A necropsy of the bear Saturday night confirmed it was the animal that killed White, the statement said.
The first sign of trouble came Friday afternoon, when three hikers noticed an abandoned backpack and signs of a struggle – including torn clothing and blood – along the river, the park service said.
The hikers went back to a rest area, about three miles to the south, and alerted authorities around 5:30 p.m. Friday.
About two and a half hours later, park rangers conducting an aerial search spotted at least one grizzly bear and, after touching down, the unidentified victim's remains.
The bear intially ran away, but returned to the site a short time later while the rangers were investigating the scene, forcing the rangers to retreat, the park service said.
After the bear began to circle around them and as darkness was setting in, the rangers decided to wait until Saturday to remove the body.
The area of the Denali backcountry where the attack occurred has been closed – prohibiting all hiking and camping in that area – "until further notice," the park service said.
About 12 grizzly bears have been living this summer around where Friday's attack occurred, the park said, citing wildlife biologists.
Grizzly bear attacks are not common, though they are not unprecedented. Last September, a grizzly attacked and killed a hunter in northwestern Montana within sight of another hunter. Earlier that year, grizzly bears killed two men in Yellowstone National Park, according to the park's superintendent.
This attack is the "first known bear mauling fatality" recorded in Denali National Park and Preserve, according to the park service.


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France Economic Implosion Underway; French Retail Sales Contract 9th Consecutive Month as Cost Inflation Surges
Mish Moved to MishTalk.Com Click to Visit.
Inquiring minds are noting the expected (at least in this corner) collapse in European retail sales as measured by PMI indices.
The spotlight for this post is France, the second largest Eurozone economy following Germany.
The Markit France Retail PMI® shows French retail sales fall for ninth consecutive month.
Key points:France Economic Implosion Underway
- Sales fall at sharper pace on both monthly and annual measures
- Purchasing costs rise at strongest rate in ten months
- Stocks of goods for resale decline at faster pace
French retailers reported another month-on-month decline in sales during December – the ninth in succession which is a survey record. Sales were also down on an annual basis, and fell well short of retailers' plans. Gross margins remained under considerable pressure, partly reflecting a strong and accelerated rise in purchasing costs.
The headline Retail PMI® slipped to 46.8 in December, from 48.8 in November. The latest reading was indicative of a solid rate of contraction. Anecdotal evidence suggested that a difficult economic climate and low customer footfall had contributed to the drop in sales.
Actual sales at French retailers once again disappointed relative to previously set plans in December. The degree of undershoot was the greatest since August. Survey respondents are also pessimistic regarding the one-month outlook for sales.
Factors expected by retailers to boost sales over the coming three months include cold weather, new product launches and promotions. Those factors expected to depress sales include a weak economy, depressed consumer confidence and increased taxes.
Latest data indicated that French retailers' gross margins remained under strong pressure in December. Margins have declined in every month since February 2008.
Wholesale prices faced by French retailers continued to increase in December. The rate of inflation accelerated to the sharpest since February. Panellists reported that suppliers had generally raised prices in order to pass on higher raw material costs.
Retail sales in France fell for the 9th consecutive month, a new record. Deterioration is marked as well as expected.
Because of the sharp rise in inflation, things are even worse than they look at first glance of the PMI numbers.
The horrendous policies from president Francois Hollande and his socialist cronies including ridiculous tax hikes and inane rules on firing workers are going to cause massive heartburn (to put things mildly).
I have to laugh at the comment by Markit that "low customer footfall had contributed to the drop in sales". Nearly as amusing, note that retailers expect "increased sales because of cold weather."
For further reading, please consider economically insane proposal by French president Francois Hollande "Make Layoffs So Expensive For Companies That It's Not Worth It"
Given that any clear-thinking person should quickly realize that if companies cannot fire workers they will be extremely reluctant to hire them in the first place , it should be no surprise to discover French Unemployment Highest in 14 Years (And It's Going to Get Much Worse).
In France, Government spending amounts to 55% of total domestic output. For discussion, please see Hollande's Honeymoon is Over; 54% of Voters Unhappy; Unions Promise "War" in September.
Looking ahead to 2013, I Expect things in France to get worse at an accelerated pace.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock


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The Sarge amp is a 15-watt, EL84-powered circuit that uses vintage Hammond organ transformers and a Fender Deluxe-style tone stack.
The Champaign, Illinois, headquarters for Analog Outfitters is part junk shop, part audio monastery, and it's staffed by a devout crew committed to mastering all things audio: If you're planning a music festival, they'll supply vintage gear, lighting, a mixing console, and even an engineer to patch it all together and run your sound. They also specialize in organ repair. Needless to say, these guys are a resourceful bunch. Given the oldschool parts (tubes, heavy-duty transformers) used in so many old organs—and the fact that old organs aren't exactly the rage they once were—it's little surprise they've also ventured into guitar amplification.
What's doubly cool is that Analog Outfitters has parlayed its expertise across varied audio experiences and equipment. Their Sarge amp is a 15-watt, EL84-powered circuit that uses vintage Hammond organ transformers and a Fender Deluxe-style tone stack. Each amp is handbuilt with slightly different aesthetics, but uses the same basic components to deliver unique twists on classic tones.
Old Parts, New Ideas
Much of Sarge's immediate appeal is
derived from the unique enclosure. Once
home to scientific equipment, these heavyduty
aluminum boxes are tough and highly
portable. Each enclosure is slightly different,
but they all have roughly the same
pillbox-like design. On the back, three
holes yield access to an 8 Ω speaker output,
a fuse, and the power-cord jack.
The Sarge is small enough to sit on a cabinet and solid enough to tough it out on the floor. Inside, you'll find three controls affixed to a vintage embossed sign. The V knob controls volume, and T and B control the treble and bass EQ, respectively. There are also power and standby switches, and a red indicator light—it's about as simple a control set as you'll find. Behind these knobs lurks the Sarge's ammunition—two EL84s in the power section, two 12AX7s for the preamp, and a 5Y3 rectifier.
I ran the Sarge into a 4x10 cabinet where it
sat perched like a helmet on an armor-clad
mercenary—a singular red eye menacingly
surveying the dark studio, ready and
at attention. My Stratocaster was plugged
directly in, with volume around noon. At
15 watts, the Sarge saturates pretty quickly
as you roll the volume clockwise, but it
will bark with true field-sergeant authority,
too—easily hanging with a drummer and a
second guitarist. If you're after a gritty tone,
Sarge does stand its ground.
With volume a little past noon, my Strat's single-coils produced a razor-wire wall of sound—think punk-rock roots, London, in the late '70s. And just rolling back the bass knob from my original 12 o'clock setting got me a tighter, more striking tone to counter the humbuckerequipped guitarist in my band. Later, I added a Fulltone Fulldrive to the signal chain, and it proved a great asset for lead playing, revealing a lot about how pedalfriendly this amp is—even with a fairly low saturation threshold. It'll happily handle high-gain pedals and aggressive fuzz, too. A Big Muff clone retained it's boomy character without getting mushy as many fuzzes do with low-watt amps. But even without the help of pedals, the amp's natural sustain is rich and distinctly vintage. In terms of feel and tone, it has a very tweed Deluxelike personality. You shouldn't expect to coax modern hi-gain compression at max volume, but that famous tweed compression is there in plentitude.
Classic, tweed-style tones with a twist. Vibey aesthetics.
Tough as nails.
Difficult to get practical clean tones at performance
Ease of Use:
Switching to a humbucker-equipped Gibson Sonex launched the output volume through the roof. And kicking treble up a notch made the Sarge even better suited for lead duties without any pedal assistance. I really enjoyed keeping the Sarge at high volume and using the Sonex's controls to accentuate rhythm and lead sections, and it's easy to live out your Jimmy Page fantasies once you nail this technique. Rolling off your guitar's volume knob is a great way to lasso the Sarge's clean capabilities, though the volume decrease may make it hard to achieve a crystalline sound with a full band behind you.
The Verdict
The Analog Outfitters Sarge is a remarkable
amplifier dripping with mojo and fiery
furnace tone. If you love recording with
smaller amps, you'll dig its multifaceted uses
and expansive personality. Those searching
for pure cleans—especially in a performance
context—should look elsewhere.
That said, at lower volumes you can achieve
real character and sensitivity with a softer
sting. Sarge also plays well with all pickups,
and great with fuzz boxes—delivering a lot
more range with effects than you might be
accustomed to from a low-wattage amp. It
may look like a piece of design gimmickry
to curmudgeonly purists, but it's a practical
design—small enough to carry from the studio
to the stage, and tough enough to tour
with. Who says organ players can't teach us
guitarists a thing or two about gear?


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In America's deep south, a region not so far away, hides a new foe threatening otherwise intelligent people's ability to decide. The Louisiana Insurance Commissioner, Jim Donelone, has rung the alarm putting homeowners on alert of "The looming threat of the new cat model, RMS 11". This is the newest addition in the catastrophe model rogue gallery challenging the gallant efforts of state insurance regulating offices. The kryptonite in their coding is the incredible capacity to produce scientifically supported uncertainty thereby weakening the ability to control rates by politically hopeful insurance commissioners everywhere. A past episode between dueling regulating powers and risk predicting machinery demonstrated the societal cost inflicted by these dastardly foes creating uncertainty whenever plugged into a wall. In 2006, RMS rolled out an arbitrary change to their trusty hurricane catastrophe model in RiskLink 6.0, costing Florida homeowners $82 billion. Stay tuned to state regulating offices for the latest updates on the battle between man and machine...Weinkle uncovers some eyebrow raising factiods, such as the fact that the estimated probability of a Category 5 hurricane hitting Florida has apparently increased from previous model filings in several models by 100%. She also shows that across five different models, the estimated cost of a Category 5 storm in Florida ranges from $18 billion to $146 billion.
In the mean time, let's take a closer look at these new trade secret rascals...
Based on these numbers, Weinkle calls the catastrophe models tools that create uncertainties and makes the nonobvious point that decisions about risk are actually decisions about modeled risk -- which may or may not be the same thing:
Together, these models create a great deal of uncertainty about the risk being insured against. In the world of insurance, uncertainty about the risk is risk in and of itself. If uncertainty increases, then the cost will too and vice versa. So, a reasonable question to ask would be, "Has the modeled risk changed?"Not surprisingly, catastrophe models have faced some criticism, such as found in this recent news article from Louisiana:
Catastrophe models are controversial. Proponents say they bring science to underwriting and synthesize the latest understanding of storms and climate change to insurers. Opponents say they're gee-whiz black boxes that manufacture instant justification for high rates for insurers.The problem with catastrophe models is not that they lack value (they are actually extremely powerful and potentially useful tools), it is just very hard to assess what that value is (e.g., PDF), and their black box nature makes such assessments extremely difficult. The lack of an industry-wide evaluation capability, strong hints of conflict of interest and the defensive nature of some of the cat modelers makes the issue a mine field of bad decisions for businesses and governments alike.


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Bleach: Memories of NobodySynopsisWhile doing a regular clean-up of Hollows, Ichigo and Rukia meet a rouge Shinigami named Shenna. Shenna is being threatened by a supernatural group of terrorists called The Dark Ones, and Ichigo becomes emotionally involved in rescuing yet another damsel in distress. ReviewI'll be straight with you, Dear Reader. I went into Bleach: Memories of Nobody expecting it to fail. This was probably because I had a conversation with another fan just yesterday about the show, and he pointed out several weaknesses I never saw or considered in my original review. And these weren't small, nitpicky things either, but gaping weaknesses that can kill the show's suspense and entertainment value. It felt funny, watching so many holes get shot into one of my favorite shows. These were things I thought I should have seen myself, but had somehow either ignored or missed. "Maybe," I thought, "maybe it's nowhere near as good as I thought it was." And whether that holds true for the series, I won't know until the inevitable rewrite as I've started buying DVDs by the season. But as for the movie itself, I am happy to report that this fan was pleased with how Memories of Nobody turned out. It was pleasant surprise. In the tradition of other Studio Peirrot movies like Urusei Yatsura: Only You and InuYasha: Affections Touching Time, this movie was made simply to please fans, and it makes that goal with professional ease. After an incoherent opening sequence that was supposed to pique curiosity, but only inspired only confusion, we find ourselves in a familiar situation. A young nameless, anonymous plot device- er, I mean spirit girl- is running from a Hollow. And chasing that Hollow is Ichigo and Rukia, on what I assume is a breezy autumn Saturday because it looks they have nothing much better to do than, you know, save the world. Kids these days. And Rukia, that skirt makes you look fat. Anyway, after killing the Hollow and sending the girl to the Soul Society, there is a cute sequence where Rukia chastises Ichigo for carelessly leaving his physical body behind while his spirit goes to fight the Hollow. "I'm sick of you tossing your body all over the place and leaving me to take care of it," she says. It's a nudge and a wink to the fans of the show, and it's effectively funny. After that gag though, the wheels of the plot start going round and round when they meet this girl: Her name is Shenna. She is a rogue Soul Reaper with no memory of what unit she is in or when she came to Earth. She likes ribbons in her hair, riding Ferris Wheels, and teasing Ichigo as the movie moves along. For me, she is the reason this movie worked as well as it did. She is a sweet character who is likeable from pretty much frame one, and nothing is done to change that. The Dark Ones, the prerequisite villains of the movie, have taken an interest in her and those ghost things you see surrounding her in the above picture. It soon becomes paramount to the survival of both the Real World and the Soul Society that she be protected. Ichigo is naturally the man for the job, but to do it he must slice through both The Dark Ones and Soul Society red tape. There are notable weaknesses of this movie, mostly having to do with not making any sense or having only the vaguest sense of reality. Writing them up individually, though, feels nitpicky, and I get the sense that people who really want their movies to make sense probably wouldn't be watching anything like Bleach. I doubt they'd be watching much anime, either. The animation for the movie is up to par with the normal standards of a feature-length movie. It's probably nothing to write home about, but there were a couple of scenes that dazzled my eyes, especially after watching the more washed out Ajumi ~Beach Story~. The plot moves along steadily without feeling too forced or artificial. And while most of the characters from the series make an appearance, this is not a reunion movie. Orihime, Chad and the rest of Ichigo's posse fade to the background and only make cameos. This was a wise move, since there's only room for so much in the movie. Ichigo and Shenna are the focus here, and nothing is done to stray from that. The music gets its own paragraph. Props to the music director, or whatever the job is called, for the score in this one. While it's not worth buying a soundtrack for, it does an excellent job of complimenting the movie without melodrama. While there is yet another remix of "Number One" in the opening using guitar riffs that sound suspiciously like Michael Jackson's "Beat It," the rest of the music is very eclectic, using screeching violins during one fight scene, moody opera while visiting a carnival of souls, and a haunting MIDI sequence when things get really bad for our heroes. It takes skill to make a soundtrack that compliments the action as well as the one found here. Here at THEM, the vaguest rating we can possibly give is three stars. Three stars can mean just about anything, which is why I suggest that anytime you see us rate something three stars that looks interesting to you, you'd best read the review, like you're doing now. Or at least scan it. I've seen a three star rating mean, "An average show, nothing to get excited about," "a good show that's worth watching," "a show so close to four stars it hurts me that we can't award three and a half," and "an entertaining anime if you like its subject matter." So, for clarification purposes, here is exactly what I mean by three stars: "Fans shouldn't be disappointed by Bleach: Memories of Nobody, but here being a fan is like the dress code at a fancy restaurant. If you don't meet the dress code, no steak for you." Fans shouldn't be disappointed by this movie. Subtract a star if you are not a fan of the show. — Bradley Meek Recommended Audience: Stylized violence and mild language, but nothing that should scar all but the very young for life. In other words, typical Shounen fare. Version(s) Viewed: digital source. Review Status: Full (1/1) Bleach: Memories of Nobody © 2006 Studio Pierrot / TV Tokyo |
© 1996-2015 THEM Anime Reviews. All rights reserved. |


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...so why is this year's inauguration on Monday the 21st (the Martin Luther King holiday), and not the day before?
It's for the same reason that Sally tells Harry they don't make Sunday underpants: because of God.
Which is to say, because it's Sunday.
I had thought that this was constitutional, but it's not: it's just a tradition. You can read the brief version here. This happens -- roughly -- once every 28 years (there are disruptions for various reasons). It happened with Reagan in January of 1985, Ike in January of 1955, and Wilson in March of 1915 (remember what I said about disruptions?). The current tradition (which was done with all three of those earlier gentlemen) is to have a private swearing-in on the actual, uh, inauguration day, and then a big public hoopla on the following day, including a do-over of the swearing-in ceremony. (Which happens: they had to do it last time too, after all, albeit for different reasons.)
It would be awkward if there was actually a new President, and not a second term, but coincidentally that's only happened twice, and not for well over a century: the two times were Hayes in 1877 and Taylor in 1849. (The first of these lead to the fanciful notion that David Rice Atchison was actually acting President for a day.) The other four times -- the three Twentieth Century ones, plus the first occurrence, with Monroe in 1821 -- all happened to be, as this one is, a reinauguration. It certainly hasn't come up since the Presidency became what it is now, i.e. the sort of office where you need to know at every moment who is in it. (In 1848, a day here or there wasn't that big a deal.)
Perhaps that will happen next time, which will be (unless unforeseen disruptions occur) on Sunday, January 20, 2041. (If not then, then next up is Sunday, January 20, 2069, and then Sunday, January 20, 2097.)
(To say it's ridiculous to speculate about parties and presidents 28 years into the future is to wildly understate the matter. (Will there even be the same two parties? Will our constitutional structure have changed? Who knows.) Nevertheless, I can't help but pointing out that since WW2, with one exception, the parties have alternated eight-year stints. (The exception is that under this scheme Carter should have won the 1980 election, so that that particular sixteen year stint was divided 4/12 instead of 8/8; change that outcome, and no other, and the pattern holds precisely.) I consider it extremely unlikely that this pattern will hold for twenty-eight more years. (Indeed, I hope it doesn't: a Republican administration in 2016 would be a disaster for the Republic.) But if it happened to, then January 20, 2041 would indeed see the inauguration of a new President, and not a reinauguration.)
Normally I would natter on about this -- intersecting, as it does, various of my obsessions -- but I don't have to, because this marvelous post I found in looking into it says everything I'd want to say about it and more, including remarkably complete histories of each of the previous incidents, explanations of both disruptions of the 28-year-cycle, etc. If you've read this far, and you're still interested, click on over.
A reality-based blog by Stephen Saperstein Frug
"There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone."
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Two Weeks Ago I Had Jury Duty
...and I live-tweeted it. Since (rather to my surprise) a number of people mentioned that they liked the tweets I decided to wildly overreact to what was doubtless mere politeness collect them all in one place for the pathetic gratification of my swollen ego anyone who might be interested. Think of it as a performance piece about boredom.
So here they are. I hope they are at least as a tenth as pleasant as jury duty itself w... Nah, I can't wish that on my Noble Readers. But click through if you're curious.
(PS: For more exciting experiences in sheer dullness, you can follow me on twitter here.)
So here they are. I hope they are at least as a tenth as pleasant as jury duty itself w... Nah, I can't wish that on my Noble Readers. But click through if you're curious.
(PS: For more exciting experiences in sheer dullness, you can follow me on twitter here.)
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Aaron Swartz (1986 - 2012)
I haven't posted on the untimely death of Aaron Swartz prior to now, because I didn't know him and didn't have anything particular to add, and because I can't imagine that anyone who reads this blog needs me to tell them about (or link them to) Aaron Swartz,
whom the entire internet, it seems, has been morning for nearly a
week. But in trying to type up a 'recent links' post, I found it swamped by Swartz-related links, so I decided to ignore the fact that this is all probably old news to all of you, and throw a few links together. It seemed wrong to mix this topic with random political stories, to say nothing of amusing tales about hats. Though I learned of him by reading his obituaries, I -- like many others -- have come to feel great grief for Swartz's heartbreakingly-young death, and great anger at those who drove him to it. So whether it's needed or not, yes, I'm giving him his own post.
Besides, the man deserves it.
• First, in case I'm wrong, and someone reading this hasn't yet heard about Aaron Swartz, the two must-read obituaries, that will give you a well-rounded sense of the man, are this one by Cory Doctorow and this one by Rick Perlstein*.
• Also recommended: Henry Farrell, Larry Lessig. (Lessig was also the featured guest on Democracy Now when they spent the hour on Aaron Swartz's life yesterday; they also replayed his speech about SOPA in its entirety -- worth listening to if you haven't heard it.)
Besides, the man deserves it.
• First, in case I'm wrong, and someone reading this hasn't yet heard about Aaron Swartz, the two must-read obituaries, that will give you a well-rounded sense of the man, are this one by Cory Doctorow and this one by Rick Perlstein*.
• Also recommended: Henry Farrell, Larry Lessig. (Lessig was also the featured guest on Democracy Now when they spent the hour on Aaron Swartz's life yesterday; they also replayed his speech about SOPA in its entirety -- worth listening to if you haven't heard it.)
• Swartz was a genuinely incredible guy, as a glance at those obituaries will tell you. I would have said that, prior to his heartbreaking death, I'd never heard of him, and this is in some sense strictly accurate. But I had read his work: I distinctly remember reading, and being extremely impressed by, his review of Chris Hayes's (marvelous, as the review says) book Twilight of the Elites. (At the time I thought Swartz had gotten one bit of his summary of Hayes's book wrong; rereading it now, I think so still; but I shan't say what, because I am by no means confident that I'm right and Swartz is wrong -- I'd want to go reread the book to confirm my judgment! Just, as with any article ever, caveat lector, and always check the original yourself.) I've also started browsing Swartz's other writings -- such as this essay on How To Be More Productive, which I liked -- and have been benefiting from them. I expect to read more in days to come.
• On the more specifically political aspects of Swartz's death, there are a lot of them, starting with petitions to fire the U.S. Attorneys Carmen Ortiz & Stephen Heymann, who seem to have the most direct culpably for Swartz's unjust persecution (sic). And I'm in favor of it -- any scrap of accountability for our hideous elites (see above re: Hayes) is welcome, and it may well serve as a (minor and insufficient) deterrent to others with similar power to abuse. That said, I think that emptywheel is right about this:
I didn't know Aaron personally, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would seek individualized solutions to systemic problems.... If we want to fix the injustice that was done to Aaron Swartz, we need to fix the aspects of the system that rewarded such behavior. We need to fix the law that empowered the prosecutors gunning for him. We need to put some breaks on DOJ's power. And we should start by getting rid of the guy who has fostered this culture of abuse for the last four years.More on the political side of Swartz's death: Corey Robin on why Swartz should not be posthumously pardoned and Matt Stoller on Swartz's broader politics, and on the role of corruption in Swartz's death. (Still more from Glenn Greenwald.) Oh, and Swartz's family and partner see the prosecutors as central to, and culpable in, his death; they see him as someone who died in a political cause. The politics here is not imposed by outsiders to Swartz's life. (Update: Greenwald has a second piece -- talking about the connection between punishing prosecutorial overreach in this case and more generally, which is here.)
• If you're misguidedly inclined to a 'where there's smoke there's fire' take on the fact that Swartz was hounded to death by a prosecutor, you should read "The Truth About Aaron Swartz's 'Crime'", by an expert witness who was going to testify for the defense. And also Tim Wu in the New Yorker: "Basically, under American law, anyone interesting is a felon. The prosecutors, not the law, decide who deserves punishment."
• Finally, I will say that I thought the best line I saw about Swartz's death -- at least the one that moved me most, and had the most relevance to those of us who weren't his friends when he lived -- was this from Quinn Norton, Swartz's ex-lover -- who also wrote an incredibly moving eulogy for Swartz here -- who wrote on twitter:
Make the world that wouldn't have killed him, please.May we make it so.
— Quinn Norton (@quinnnorton) January 13, 2013
Swartz accomplished a stunning amount in his life; save for the fact that all of his accomplishments are too tied into recent developments, his resume could be mistaken for that of a man who died at 76, not 26. I do not take this fact
Swartz was, by all reports, an amazing (if also sometimes personally difficult, in the way some amazing guys are) guy. I wish I'd known him; I wish mostly, more strongly than I would normally feel for someone who died (even young), that I still had the chance to know him.
Rest in peace.
* On a tangential point: holy shit, Rick Perlstein is blogging again! Fabulous news. Adjust your bookmarks now.
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Poem of the Day: Ogden Nash's "Kind of an Ode to Duty"
In honor of my first day of jury duty today, the poem of the day is...
Kind of an Ode to Duty
O Duty,
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously?
Why art thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?
Why art thou fifty per cent martyr
And fifty-one per cent Tartar?
Why is it thy unfortunate wont
To try to attract people by calling on them either to leave undone the deeds they like, or to do the deeds they don't?
Why are thou so like an April post-mortem
On something that died in the ortumn?
Above all, why dost thou continue to hound me?
Why art thou always albatrossly hanging around me?
Thou so ubiquitous,
And I so iniquitous.
I seem to be the one person in the world thou art perpetually preaching at who or to who;
Whatever looks like fun, there art thou standing between me and it, calling yoo-hoo.
O Duty, Duty!
How noble a man should I be hadst thou the visage of a sweetie or a cutie!
Wert thou but houri instead of a hag
Then would my halo indeed be in the bag!
But as it is thou art so much forbiddinger than a Wodehouse hero's forbiddingest aunt
That in the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can't.
-- Ogden Nash
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
"Forever Free": 150 Years Ago Today
Lincoln wrote (and thus did*) this:
* Generalized nod towards J. L. Austin.
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States...Some important context from James M. McPherson, probably the greatest living historian of the Civil War:
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free.
The final proclamation exempted from emancipation the border states and some parts of Confederate states controlled by Union forces. They were deemed not to be at war with the United States; therefore the president's power as commander in chief to seize enemy property could not apply to them. These exemptions gave rise to the accusation that Lincoln "freed" the slaves in areas where he had no power, and left them in slavery where he did have power.A great step forward for the history of freedom and justice. Worthy of taking a moment to remember, and reflect upon, today.
Nothing could be more wrong. For one thing, tens of thousands of ex-slaves lived in parts of the Confederacy that were occupied by Union forces but were not exempted from the proclamation. They celebrated it as their charter of freedom. For that matter, so did many slaves in exempted areas, which included the four slave-holding states that never left the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland) as well as Confederate areas that had been returned to Union control, such as New Orleans and the forty-eight Virginia counties that would soon become West Virginia. They recognized that if emancipation took hold in the Confederate states, slavery could scarcely survive in the upper South.
The proclamation officially turned the Union army into an army of liberation—if it could win the war. And by authorizing the enlistment of freed slaves in the army, the final proclamation went a long step toward creating that army of liberation. If the Emancipation Proclamation was merely a piece of paper that did not actually free anyone, as skeptics then and later charged, the Declaration of Independence was likewise a mere piece of paper that did not in itself create a new nation. Both outcomes depended on victory in a war to which these documents gave new purpose.
* Generalized nod towards J. L. Austin.
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text:
"Are you on anything?"
Courtney Love pauses suddenly from her simultaneous sewing, smoking, and theorizing about how the only way to be successful by the age of 25 is to forget that you have parents and grills me about the contents of my bloodstream.
It's the week before Christmas and we're sitting at the kitchen counter of the spacious, modern Tribeca loft she's rented from a Russian supermodel for the past three months, currently cluttered with "kook"-the word Love gives to the lacy fabrics and bric-a-brac she dyes or fixes or glues until they look like something belonging to Miss Havisham. Doing so relaxes her, and she is famously difficult to relax.
I'm not on anything.
"Then why are you shaking?"
Because several windows are open and it's freezing outside, so I feel like Demi Moore at the end of St. Elmo's Fire.
"So you don't take any meds?" she persists. Okay, Ambien, sometimes.
"I thought so," Love says, satisfied. "I can't sleep either. I took Ambien for a few years, but I hated waking up with fucking eggs Benedict on my face and a 1,000-page letter I didn't remember writing. You should switch to Sonata."
And who would know better? When I arrived earlier this evening, Love's first order of business upon stepping out of the shower was to greet her psychopharmacologist, who dropped by unannounced to make sure everyone in the Love-Cobain residence, as it's referred to by the housekeeping service, had what they needed. After consulting her roommate and guitarist, the reedy, handsome, British 23-year-old Micko Larkin, Love dismissed the doctor with a simple "We're good."
During the past decade, sundry cracked-out antics, including an OxyContin OD in front of her daughter, fueled macabre speculation regarding Love's mental state. And just recently, a Los Angeles court awarded guardianship of 17-year-old Frances Bean to Love's late husband Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor, and sister, Kimberly Dawn Cobain, amid rumors of domestic abuse. Love's coping mechanism is, as ever, pure manic energy, which is not to be confused with productivity.Read More of SPIN's Interview with Courtney Love >>
Though she has been a dedicated provocateur and a lightning rod and a cultural sensation and a cartoon villain for nearly 20 years, it's been more than half that long since anyone could consider Courtney Love a working musician. Despite some decent reviews for her 2004 solo debut, America's Sweetheart, Love calls the record "a total disaster" and admits she was too wrecked to promote it.
But for her, survival means making music. During a 2005 stint in rehab, she began work on what would become her new album, Nobody's Daughter, relying heavily on what she calls "the kindness of strangers"-in reality, the efforts of perfect nonstrangers, like America's Sweetheart collaborator Linda Perry, Billy Corgan, and producer Michael Beinhorn-all of whom have since distanced themselves from the project.
So it's not surprising that the album took five years to materialize. Nor is it surprising, in this moment of big-bucks '90s-reunion fever, that she is dusting off the Hole moniker for the first time since 1998's Celebrity Skin (also produced by Beinhorn), even though none of Love's former bandmates are involved. What is surprising, though, is that Daughter is pretty great-uneven, but raw and cathartic in ways her detractors could appreciate.
"One time, Frances was being mean and said, 'What are you going to do if the record fails?' " says Love, lighting a cigarette on her stove. "Well, Frances, it can't fail because I love it, and I've worked really hard to make sure that I love it."
Her eyes fill with tears at the mention of her daughter's name. Dressed all in black, her hair damp and her face free of makeup, the 45-year-old Love looks genuinely distraught and yet eerily composed.
Her face bears no trace of her former wide-eyed, knobby-nosed vulnerability, and her taut, altered features don't quiver easily. A woman who just moments ago proclaimed "Rock'n'roll is a fucking vacation from my life" is quickly reminded of the reality that has plagued her music career: Vacations are, by nature, temporary.
She shakes her head. "I'm lost in a fucking nightmare maze."
Read the complete cover story in the March 2010 issue of SPIN, on newsstands now!


text: "You won't believe what just happened!" It's usually a phrase that precedes gossip, but it takes an entirely different meaning when you hear it from a head of state. That's what a Central American president told me in February of 2010. I was covering the Summit of Unity in the beach resort of Cancun, Mexico. Latin American and Caribbean presidents were in attendance. The aforementioned president, whose name I will not publish for obvious reasons, had just walked out of a closed-door meeting attended by several Latin American heads of state. What he told me next was unprecedented, as far as I know, in the realm of Latin American diplomacy. "We almost had a fistfight," the president said. At first, he wouldn't say who was involved, but after persistent questioning by several of us reporters he finally disclosed that then- Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez had an argument that escalated into a shouting match, and were it not for their colleagues present, would have ended up in a fight. I left it at gossip at first, but Chavez himself later confirmed it. In an interview with CNN en Espanol, the shoot-from-the-hip leftist leader, now relaxed and smiling, told the story. "I think that if the table hadn't been there as an obstacle and our friends weren't sitting right there, president Uribe physically would have attacked me," Chavez said. By then, Chavez had already assumed the role of provocateur-in-chief in Latin American politics – a title previously held by former Cuban president Fidel Castro until he ceded power to his younger brother Raul due to illness in 2006. READ: Hugo Chavez, influential leader with mixed record, dies at 58 That confrontation was not the first time that Chavez had a run-in with a foreign leader. The Venezuelan firebrand caused none other than Spanish King Juan Carlos to lose his patience. The king, normally polished and refined as it's proper for his stature, shouted at Chavez: "Why don't you just shut up!" after the Venezuelan president called Spanish Primer Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist several times at an Ibero-American summit held in Chile in November of 2007. I started wondering how such a renegade lacking diplomatic skills, former coup conspirator who served time in jail and supporter of an economic model that had already failed in the world had become so popular in Latin America? What was it about Chavez that made him electrifyingly popular in his homeland and leftist circles in Latin America? READ: Venezuelans line streets for Chavez procession And then I remembered Chapeu Mangueira. I had traveled to Brazil in early 2010 and visited some slums on the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro. These slums, known in Brazil as favelas, are a stone's-throw away from the main tourist attractions in Rio, like Copacabana Beach. Chapeu Mangueira was one of those slums where people lived in shacks, survived on pennies a day, lacked access to basic services and, in general, lived in extreme poverty and marginalized from the rest of society. I also remembered Chimalhuacan, a slum in Mexico City that mirrors Chapeu Mangueira. I thought as well of Ciudad Bolivar, a barrio in Bogota, the Colombia capital – that is just as marginalized and poor. The Venezuelan capital has its own favelas. Petare, a shantytown in western Caracas, is a painfully sobering example. This is where the poor among the poor in Venezuela live. It's an area that had been ignored and marginalized for decades. After coming to power in 1999, Chavez focused on developing welfare programs for the poor. The programs, called misiones sociales, have measurably reduced poverty in places like Petare. READ: Chavez empowered the poor, divided a nation Chavez killed two birds with one stone. He transformed the politically apathetic Petareños into fierce Chavistas who voted en masse and took to the streets to celebrate Chavez as his power increased, and to show support after he announced he was suffering from cancer in June of 2011. The poor, traditionally ignored and marginalized by Latin American politicians, became Chavez's main political weapon. It is true that Chavez squandered oil revenues (estimated at $120 billion a year), scared away investment by nationalizing foreign and domestic companies and neglected the Venezuelan infrastructure. Spending $30 billion a year in social programs (used as government propaganda) while driving away foreign investment is unsustainable in the long term. READ: With Chavez away for months, big changes roil Venezuela He managed to stack the Supreme Court with loyalists who ruled consistently in his favor. Socialist policies that undermined production and produced shortages of basic food products also fueled inflation, while a depreciation of the currency shortly before Chavez's death promised to worsen those problems. Venezuela still has one of the highest murder rates in the hemisphere. More recently, Chavez had taken steps to revoke the license of the last opposition TV network in the country. Human rights groups consistently raised alarms that Chavez was using the judicial system as a political tool to repress the opposition and silence dissent. READ: After Chavez, a power vacuum "By his second full term in office, the concentration of power and erosion of human rights protections had given the government free rein to intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans who criticized the president or thwarted his political agenda," New York-based Human Rights Watch said this week, adding that the Chavez government had shown "open disregard for basic human rights guarantees." Regardless, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner eulogized the fallen leftist leader on her Twitter account by saying that "The great legacy of Chavez is the social inclusion of millions of Venezuelans that used to be invisible and today are protagonists." I would argue his legacy goes beyond that. An argument could be made that the Cuban economy would have collapsed without the oil it gets from Venezuela. Chavez also ushered in a new area of populist leaders including Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. They have all borrowed Chavez's playbook by catering to the poor and railing against the United States, a country they call "the evil empire." They all benefited from cheap oil from Venezuela while Chavez made allies who helped him slowly but surely tilt Latin American politics to the left. But, for the outside world, at least, the inclusion of the poor will probably remain at the top of Chavez's legacy. The formula is so simple it makes you wonder why nobody though of it before. After all, a 22-year-old single mother of two in Petare, Chapeu Mangueira, Chimalhuacan or Ciudad Bolivar, doesn't care about macroeconomic policies or free market economies, but about a leader who will make it possible to feed her children tomorrow. And to millions of Venezuelans, that was Hugo Chavez. READ: Opinion: Chavez was a maker of dreams


text:
A Christmas Story, The Musical arrives on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre just in time for the 2012 holiday season. Based on the 1983 movie perennial, the musical plays and eight-week limited engagement through December 30. The show opened on November 19th and BroadwayWorld.com was there! Check out photos from the opening night arrivals below...
A Christmas Story, The Musical stars Dan Lauria as Jean Shepherd, John Bolton as The Old Man, Tony Award nominee Erin Dilly as Mother, Johnny Rabe as Ralphie, Zac Ballard as little brother Randy, Caroline O'Connor as school teacher Miss Shields,Eddie Korbich as Santa Claus and Joe West plays Ralphie at certain performances. The ensemble features Tia Altinay, John Babbo, Charissa Bertels, Grace Capeless, Zoe Considine, Andrew Cristi, Mathew deGuzman, Thay Floyd, George Franklin, Nick Gaswirth, Mark Ledbetter, Jose Luaces, Jack Mastrianni, Mara Newbery, Lindsay O'Neil, Sarah Min-Kyung Park, J.D. Rodriguez,Analise Scarpaci, Lara Seibert, Jeremy Shinder, Luke Spring, Beatrice Tulchin, Kirsten Wyatt, and Pete and Lily as the rambunctious Bumpus Hounds.
America's #1 holiday movie came to hilarious life onstage when A Christmas Story, The Musical launched a tour in 2011 that culminated in a critically successful run in Chicago. The musical features a bright holiday score by composer/lyricist team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and a witty book by Joseph Robinette based on the writings of radio humorist Jean Shepherd and the 1983 holiday film favorite. Tony Award winner John Rando directs the production with Warren Carlyle choreographing.
Photo Credit: Walter McBride
Tim Didonato & Glenn Beck
Michael F. Mitri & Family
Dana Barron & Taylor Barron Vickerman
Benj Pasek with mom & Justin Paul with mom
Steve Byrne
Steve Byrne
Peter Billingsley & Gerald Goehring
Jeffrey Jackson & Guest
Eileen Rando, John Rando, Alex Rando
Michael Park, Maura West & Joe West
Michael Park, Maura West & Joe West
Gabriella Fanuele & Priscilla Lopez